Tuesday, October 27, 2009

I don't know where exactly to put the blame for this, because it's an epidemic that's really been going around over the last couple years. White Castle compared eating its barbecue pork slider to attending a burlesque show in which a human in pig costume is drenched in barbecue sauce à la Flashdance. Burger King suggested that Whopper Juniors are produced when a hamburger has sex with a human woman. Even the typically sedate Reese's opted for an ad implying that its peanut butter eggs were the result of amorous behavior between a chocolate bunny and a jar of PB. Leave it to Bud Light not just to continue this trend but to somehow up the ante.

You might have seen this ad during the recent Saturday Night Live episode in which Bud Light bought almost all of the ad space to pimp its new Golden Wheat variety. And then, if you died of a heart attack later that night and went to hell, you probably saw it on the big screen down there, played at a volume loud enough to drown out the wails of the damned.

Stodgy Boss Type: "Bud Light and Golden Wheat? I thought that was never gonna happen."

Woman 1: "Of course it was going to happen."

Woman 2: "She practically threw herself at him."

Before I go any further, let me just clear this up: yes, I get the joke. Bud Light and Golden Wheat! It's like they're people! Hilarious! The problem is that the joke is (a) terrible and (b) ultimately rather disgusting.

I'm sorry, you all wanted... to have sex with a vaguely anthropomorphic sheaf of wheat? I guess the problem there is it would merely have resulted in Golden Wheat Urine, which as a beverage ranks at least one notch below Bud Light.

Dude-Bro 1: "Bud Light sealed the deal."

[Scene of Bud Light and Golden Wheat getting it on in the elevator]

Because, I mean, that's what I want to think happened. Do I want to be told about the taste of the beer? Of course not! What I want to know is, if this beer's existence could have been the result of sexual activity, what two things would have fucked to produce it? The answer, of course: golden wheat, and regular Bud Light. (I would also have accepted Budweiser and light golden wheat. As if that would ever happen.)

Security Guard: "Oh... that's nice."

No. It is not.

Announcer: "Introducing Bud Light Golden Wheat. Light beer, huge-"

Huge penis? Huge erection? Huge double-D-cup wheat boobs?

Announcer: "-flavor."

Boring.

Announcer: "They hooked up, and you're gonna fall in love."

I'm going to "fall in love" with my toilet bowl, at any rate. Lord. It isn't funny, and it isn't appetizing. If you insist on using sex to sell things, can't it be regular human sex? Why is the food always doing the procreating?

I know what you're thinking. "There's no way it gets worse than that." But you're wrong!

Oh yeah.

Woman 1: "At first we were against it."

Mostly because the idea of beer having sex with a cereal crop was just head-spinning.

Woman 2: "He's so not your type."

Woman 1: "He goes out, like, every night!"

[Shot of a human woman grinding against Bud Light in a club]

Is this a metaphor? I don't even know anymore. I guess we've already opened up the possibility of humans having sex with either of these anthropomorphic monstrosities in the other ad.

Woman 3 (2 again?): "You know, eventually he took to what she liked, learned about her..."

Woman 1: "He really made an effort."

Thank God! I was worried this beer I was drinking was the result of a sweaty, lust-fueled elevator hookup. But maybe it had more to do with monogamous relationship sex. America!

Woman 1: "But there really is a fine line between romance and stalking."

That's right, ladies. If you're not interested in a guy, you don't need to put up with him serenading you from outside your window. That's called stalking.

Woman 3 and/or 2: "Yeah, but he walked it like a pro."

Just kidding! If a man climbs to your window on a ladder, it just means he wants you so much that it's your feminine duty to submit to his advances! Good thing we have beer commercials to teach us important lessons like this.

For good measure, we get another wheat/beer sex scene, or whatever that's supposed to be. It's not like Bud Light's non-sex ads for Golden Wheat tell you all that much about the beer - the thesis of this one boils down to "Wheat: probably tasty" - and I guess Bud Light sells itself for the most part, but man. The whole campaign just strikes me as a ploy aimed squarely at the post-frat audience - hey, you like beer, right? Do you also like sex and jokes about sex? Well, we've got a new beer flavor and we're advertising it with sex and/or sex jokes! And just in case anyone was unclear on the target, here's a joke about how stalking can be easily construed as romance, right out of the Tucker Max handbook.

The irony of all this is that wheat beer strikes me as more of a specialty thing, not exactly the drink of choice for guys heading off to the bar to pound six Bud Lights. (Also, it's somewhat hilarious that Bud Light is going with the tagline "Huge flavor!" when wheat beer is known to be light on account of the fact that "wheat contributes very little flavor to a beer." Good call there!) Wheat beer is not the drink of choice for the typical Bud Light crowd, and somehow I doubt that even they have the power to make it so. On the other hand, that beer totally fucked that wheat. Get two, bro! This oughta be good.